Big data meets art world, brings space into focus

WORCESTER — Photographer, filmmaker and writer Michael Benson said the marriage of the telescope and the camera in the late 1800s opened up new avenues for discovery in the universe.

Mr. Benson’s 8-foot-by-4-foot chromogenic print, “Carina Nebula,” which is featured until June 22 in the Jeppson Idea Lab at the Worcester Art Museum, attempts to make space visually and conceptually accessible through a photographic image created from myriad telescope data files.

It’s a lot to wrap your mind around but it provides almost a spacecraft view of moments in the universe, compressed into one image.

“Our question is, When is data art?” Katrina Stacy, assistant curator of education, said about the installation.